The relationship between parental racial attitudes and children’s implicit prejudice

Although many researchers assume that implicit racial attitudes develop via exposure to prejudicial socializing agents (e.g., parents, peers, and the media) starting in childhood, there is a dearth of research on implicit attitudes in children. This study looks at the effect of one socializing agent—parents—on children’s or implicit racial prejudice. Specifically, we examine Allport’s (1954) contention that children’s identification with their parents moderates the intergenerational transmission of prejudice. Fourth- and fifth-grade children completed measures of implicit and explicit pro-White/anti-Black prejudice, as well as a survey assessing child-parent identification. Parents completed a survey that measured their attitudes toward Blacks. As hypothesized, we found greater correspondence between parents’ prejudice and children’s prejudice among children who were highly identified with their parents than less identified children.     

The search for HMAS Sydney II: Analysis and integration of survivor reports

We describe a novel application of cognitive psychology to the search for HMAS Sydney II and HSK Kormoran. Both ships sank off the west coast of Australia following an engagement during World War II. Tragically and mysteriously, there were no survivors from Sydney and, despite considerable interest in locating both ships, their positions remained unknown until their discovery in March 2008. The main evidence regarding the location of both ships consisted of reports by the German survivors from Kormoran. Working with the Finding Sydney Foundation, the group that ultimately found the ships, we developed a method to extract relevant information from these reports and to integrate it with other physical information and used this method to correctly identify the location of Kormoran to within 5 km. We describe this method and discuss the unique role played by cognitive psychology in solving a previously intractable problem. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Empathic deficits and alexithymia in trauma-related impulsive aggression

Our long term interest is to develop a developmental model of impulsive aggression based on a confluence of social, psychological and biological features. This approach incorporates neurobiological research, which has identified language processing deficits as a unique characteristic of impulsive aggressors and extends it to include emotional deficits. As an initial test of this hypothesis, we examined whether empathy and alexithymia were associated with impulsive aggression. Regressions were performed to explore the associations among impaired empathy, alexithymia, impulsive aggression, verbal and physical general aggression. Among impulsive aggressive veterans (n = 38) recruited from a VA trauma clinic, alexithymia predicted impulsive aggression and empathic deficits predicted verbal aggression. Neither emotional awareness deficit predicted general physical aggression in this middle-aged sample. Results suggested that empathic deficits were associated with general verbal aggression, but alexithymia was uniquely associated with impulsive aggression. Consideration of alexithymia in impulsive aggression has implications for its etiology, prevention and treatment. Published in 2008 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Implicit orientation toward family and school among bilingual Latino college students

The authors examined the associations that underlie the orientations of bilingual Latino college students toward family and school. Participants completed, in English or Spanish, 3 implicit association tests assessing their attitude toward family vs. school, identifications with these concepts, and self-esteem. Results revealed a more positive attitude toward, and stronger identification with, family than school. Identification with family was stronger among participants who completed the study in English, suggesting self-definition in terms of distinctions from the context. Last, the more participants valued family over school and identified with family rather than school, the higher was their self-esteem. These findings shed light on the subtle, yet crucial, mechanisms by which cultural knowledge is incorporated in the self-concept of bilingual Latino college students.     

Multicultural Competency Instrumentation: A Review and Analysis of Reliability Generalization

This article reviews the internal consistency reliability of multicultural competency instrumentation. Additional psychometric properties are qualitatively reviewed for commonly used instruments and 5 other measures of multicultural competency that have not previously been reviewed in the literature. Results indicate that the most widely used instruments have generally acceptable internal consistency reliability across different populations and settings. Limitations of research conducted on multicultural counseling competencies are identified, and recommendations for future research are provided.     

Heartbeat perception in depression

Alterations in bodily awareness have been implicated in depression but there has been little detailed empirical characterisation of the degree and accuracy of body perception in the disorder. The present study examined the objective accuracy of heartbeat perception (using the Schandry mental tracking task) and the subjective degree of bodily focus (using the Bodily Consciousness Questionnaire; BCQ) in healthy control volunteers, a moderately depressed community sample, and a more severely depressed clinic sample (n=18 in each group). The community sample showed less accurate heartbeat perception than the control group as expected. Counter to prediction, however, the more severely depressed clinic sample performed better than the community depressed sample and equivalently to control volunteers on the Schandry task. There were no group differences on subjective bodily awareness. Implications for theories of depression are discussed.     

The consequences of effortful emotion regulation when processing distressing material: A comparison of suppression and acceptance

The present study investigated the consequences of different forms of emotion regulation. Eighty nine healthy participants viewed a distressing video of the aftermath of road traffic accidents under either suppression (of both felt and expressed affect), acceptance, or no-regulation control instructions and the immediate and longer-term consequences on emotion, mood, and memory were examined. Suppression (relative to control) led to reduced subjective experience of fear when viewing the video, but did not alter electrodermal (EDA) or heart rate (HR) response. Subsequently, suppression led to a less marked subjective emotional reaction to positive but not negative emotional images, reduced free recall memory of the video, and a greater likelihood of experiencing zero intrusions of the video's content. Acceptance (relative to control) had no impact when viewing the video, was associated with a less marked increase in EDA activity in the 5 min period immediately after viewing the video, a more marked HR deceleration and EDA response to both positive and negative images, and elevated negative affect at one week follow-up. These findings suggest, contrary to the current clinical zeitgeist, that emotion suppression can successfully lead to an ongoing down-regulation of emotion and memory, whereas acceptance may elevate subsequent emotionality.     

Grouping students for instruction: effects of learning style on achievement and attitudes

The present study examined the effects of matching and mismatching American middle-school students with a preference for learning alone or learning with peers with selected instructional treatments in order to determine the impact upon their attitudes and achievement in social studies. Analysis revealed that the learning-alone preference performed significantly better in the learning-alone condition and that the learning-with-peers preference performed significantly better in the learning-with-peers condition. However, no-preference students also performed significantly better in the learning-alone condition than with peers. In addition, data revealed that the learning-alone and the learning-with-peers students had significantly more positive attitudes when matched with their preferred learning style; the nopreference students had more positive attitudes in the learning-alone condition.